The IoT Directory – IoTUK

IoTUK has worked with Synoptica to build the IoT directory – a comprehensive IoT directory of the types of companies currently working on IoT projects. In this post, Stephen Mooney, CEO of Synoptic Technologies explains the need for smart AI to better understand the businesses working with IoT in the UK.

The Standard Industry Classification for sector categorising companies and industries was created in the mid 1930’s to better understand industry sectors, and remains a standard used by government bodies such as Companies House. Whilst this has been a useful tool for business analysis, the speed in which new business sectors are emerging is leaving the classifications obsolete.

To make matters worse, new sub-sectors are emerging that go across horizontal sectors and apply to many industry classifications. A great example of this is the Internet of Things (IOT) which range broadly across many sectors. Understanding this burgeoning space is a key priority of organisations like Digital Catapult, who created the IoTUK Nation to get a better blueprint of IOT companies around the country.

To better under the companies and sectors that make up the IOT database in the UK, the IoTUK team worked with Synoptic Technologies and deployed its Semantic Industry Classifier to let the companies themselves communicate the sector they operate in-via the text on their website.

Working with a curated list provided by the IoTUK, Synoptica used Natural Language Processing to read the content of every company’s web pages and map that against a modern list of over 180 industry sectors. Sector results were ranked against a confidence ratio based on trained algorithms and also searched the site content for recurring sentiment and keywords. Applying analysis to these keywords allowed us to better understand the fit of certain companies that fall into the IOT sector and rapidly categorise all of the companies with a more modern classification code.

Using an Artificial Intelligence solution does come with some drawbacks, especially because the solution is not human. Biases tend to be eliminated and some solutions are wrongly identified due to the language on their site. We will also find some companies have duplicated due to vast amounts of data, however we hope you will find that the solution provides a more realistic, modern examination on an emerging sector.

You can explore the data here in the IoT Directory visualisation.

Stephen Mooney

Stephen is a CEO, entrepreneur and executive with a track record of successfully growing early stage technology and sustainability startups to help secure investment, expansion and exit. He also serves as a Dealmaker in the Department of International Trade’s Global Entrepreneur Programme to help bring high quality foreign direct investment to the UK and advise growth companies. Stephen serves as a founder and board director of Synoptica and has also served as an EIR to SetSquared, the EU’s leading business incubator as well as advising a number of UK-based firms.

Previously as a co-founder of iVeridis and Carbonetworks, a pioneer of business-driven analysis of CSR data, he has developed a strong understanding of business issues relating to sustainability and has created an extensive network of individuals and corporations looking to improve global sustainable performance.

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